Saturday, 4 February 2017

Five to Five Thousand Challenge - Gavin Smith

Author Gavin Smith is the latest to take the Five to Five Thousand Challenge and share his thoughts on what the future holds.

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When Michael told me about this blog I thought it sounded
like a great idea. I did, however, find
it a little daunting. Anyone who's read
my work will know that I am much more a writer of adventure stories than I am a
futurist, but the
challenge appealed to me and I thought I would have a crack at it. So here goes:

Utilising new-media forms, propaganda, and just making-shit-up,
old-style capitalist opportunists, often masquerading as white supremacists/nationalists, take
control of, or destabilise certain strategic countries. They encourage isolationist and divisive
policies to dissuade a united resistance against corporate abuses and the
increasing power of oligarchies. They systematically de-regulate certain
industries, whilst stripping a way the rights of the average person in the
street. This leads to a series of economic
disasters and widespread civil disturbances.

Land grabs in Eastern Europe and a series of proxy wars leaves the world
constantly on the edge of a global conflict. A resurgent Russia and China become the new
superpowers, with India following closely behind, after Western Europe and
America effectively self-sabotage. The
real power, however, are the multinational megacorporations. Thanks to de-regulation many of them start
hiring military
contractors, effectively creating their own standing mercenary armies.

Short termism and environmental neglect leaves the world on
a knife-edge. Oligarchs lock themselves
in armed compounds whilst automated
factories, that employ nobody, churn out goods that people can't afford. As a result traditional economies begin to collapse. Around the world, however, people start to
opt out of a zero-sum game that they have absolutely no stake in.

Initially adopting E-commerce barter systems and then
establishing a secure and stable cryptocurrency, small
farming, craft and tech cooperatives
start to trade amongst themselves. This
movement grows and grows, micro
and crowd financing
allows the tech and craft co-operatives to create mircrofacturing facilities.

Slowly the Quiet Revolution grows. Disparate talents from all over the world come
together online, forming think tanks on everything from alternative socioeconomics, to
orbital engineering.

At the same time as the Quiet Revolution is happening
Pan-African cooperation increases and the continent experiences a period of
prolonged stability and growth, finding itself able to (more) sustainably
exploit its rich bounty of resources.

Despite the Quiet Revolution, despite the stability in
Africa, and despite the significant drop in population, the result of the
knock-on effects of various economic disasters, wars and climate catastrophes,
Earth's environment is still struggling.
Various think tanks around the world realise that for humanity to have a
future they need to look beyond their own world. Released of the profit-for-profit's
sake/bottom line predatory form of capitalism, and motivated by the potential
collapse of the Earth's ecosphere, tech co-operatives and science think tanks are
able to make extraordinary breakthroughs.
Advances in the fields of warm fusion, carbon nano-fibres and
super conductors
lead to the largest
and most ambitious engineering project in human history. The Beanstalk: a huge
cargo elevator that climbs from the plains of Africa high into orbit, providing
a cost-effective and safer way for humanity to leave Earth and explore space. Entirely crowd funded, the vast majority of
humanity have a stake in the elevator, and profit from it. Slowly, but surely humanity began to bootstrap its way out
into the Solar System.

Humanity has colonised the Solar System and begun its first
steps beyond that. Advances in genetics, cybernetics and biotech have allowed
humanity to technologically evolve to deal with the rigours of life in space
and on other planets/moons. Humanity now
comes in a myriad of different shapes and forms. Concepts like nationality have become
irrelevant. Approaching a post-scarcity
society, humanity is engaged in a species wide cooperative bid to explore
space. Science, technology and the
universe itself becomes the new metanarrative.

Seeing the mistakes they made with Earth, humans decide to
mould themselves to the environment rather than terraform, when they
colonise Mars. Extensive automated aerostatgas mining
operations take place in Jupiter's
turbulent atmosphere. Saturn also provides gas as
well as ice from its rings. The Earth
itself is renewed, having been allowed time to recover from the depredations of
the industrial era. Cities are now wide-open,
green areas. Plant life and living space
for reintroduced animals are designed into the architecture.

What was once humanity has technologically evolved at an
exponential rate. A singularity
of consciousness is achieved. Able to observe
quantum events,
science becomes instinctual and difficult to differentiate from magic.

Advanced understanding of five dimensional
physics allows post humanity to travel throughout the universe. The make contact with alien species that they
deem they will not negatively impact when they reveal their existence. Many of these species are non-biological in
nature.

Finally as all the secrets of the universe are unlocked by
post-singularity consciousnesses, what was
once humanity is faced with a choice.
Some choose to remain locked inside their bodies of designer flesh and
technology, which take the form of everything from an entire artificial star
system, to a diffuse network of femnites. Others, however, chose to leave behind their
flesh and tech bodies and use their consciousness to explore other realms. The species that began existence as little
more than a few cells of life in a shallow warm sea, moves on to the next
adventure.

"Hippy utopian bullshit?" Well perhaps but if you've read any of my
books then you'll know I've done my time at the dystopian coalface. With some of the events unfolding in the
world today I thought that I should write something upbeat.

"Not the way that science, economics and human nature
work?" Again, perhaps, though I am
fiction writer rather than a scientist, economist or sociologist. What I am conscious of is that much that is
in the 50 year section is within our grasp.
To achieve it comes down to a question of priorities, a question of
human decisions. What do we want? Should we exist as a species to simply
service oligarchies, a model we seem to be moving towards, or do we want to
explore space? "Inner and outer",
to quote Bill Hicks. I have no real
problem with people being rich but when you look at the amount of capital that
is locked up, doing so little, it is almost as if it has become an obscene
prison for the oligarchs in question.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed the above flights of fancy, and
thanks to Mike for the opportunity (to gain further understanding of my
intellectual shortcomings). If you do
fancy something a little grittier then please check out my new novel: Hangman's
Daughter (Bastard Legion Book 1), available on Kindle in the UK here
and the US here
and on Audiobook in the UK here
and the US here.